Smart Thinking: Skills for Critical Understanding and Writing, 2nd Ed

80 SMART THINKING: SKILLS FOR CRITICAL UNDERSTANDING & WRITING

Here is another example that shows how context involves both people and

ideas. Students at university usually write for a knowledgeable academic and fail to

work carefully through all the issues, assuming that the academic will 'fill in the

gaps'. In doing so, they forget that they must also meet one of the contextual

requirements of scholarly work: that they not make too many assumptions, not

presume that the audience is clever and will 'get' the point of the essay. Hence many

essays fail to achieve the required standard because their authors have not

consciously considered and learnt about the context into which they fit. This point

is significant in all communication. Whenever we communicate we must actively

imagine and reflect on our context and how that might influence the way we

present our arguments and explanations.

Exercise 6.5

For the following argument, add claims that satisfactorily show why the given

premises (claims 2, 3, and 4) are relevant to the conclusion. Then indicate two

contexts for each: one in which you would explicitly establish relevance and one

in which you would not.

1. All Australians should learn about their own nation's history.


2. History helps us to understand what is happening now.


3. Australia's history tells many stories of the fight for democracy and
   justice.


4. Learning about Australian history involves learning to write essays.

Strength of support

It is very important to think about the strength of the support that we can give our

claims. There are two distinct issues involved. First of all, we must have good

evidence. A well-founded claim, by virtue of the fact that it is well founded, will

have a number of good premises, which should be provided to assist our audience

in accepting and understanding it. But a more significant issue in communicating

our reasoning is to decide which of the supporting claims that we know about

should be explicitly stated in our argument or explanation. We should also be able

to decide when we need to do more research to find out if the claims we want to

make can be supported. The issue of well-founded claims must, in part, depend on

an analysis of whether or not the claims are true or not, but it also requires that we

consider carefully how we communicate our arguments and explanations. The

following discussion addresses this second consideration.

The burden of proof

Even if all the premises are acceptable, and even if they are relevant, you neverthe-

less still may not be effective in your reasoning. Why? Because, at base, you must